Wednesday, 24 August 2011

Blast from the past

I found this today, a bit of a blast from the past, but it does show how the industry is being persecuted for showing scenes far more mild than what i have read in books.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8351037.stm

For those of you who have been living in a cave for the past five years, the game Call of Duty contained a section where you walk through an airport killing civilians. In response to this, the British Government met in parliament to discuss this. This was in 2009.

Since then, every time there is a major incident, the first thing that will be blamed is a video game. GTA was blamed for the London Riots, never mind that the majority of young people don't have anything else to do since the government decided that youth centres were a waste of money.

The biggest risk to a developing society is ignorance. Plenty of studies done show that video gaming is bad for health, and we are made aware of this every time a child goes into school with a shotgun. Did you know, that a study made not that long ago, showed that fast paced shooters strengthened eyesight in determining greyscales. When a child walks into a school with a shotgun, think about it. They are probably not very happy at school. They are probably bullied. And their parents probably own a legal shotgun that is kept in a not very secure location.

In the case of the riots, mob mentality had a hand to play. People acting like animals when chaos reigns. But why did they begin? If they had all been playing gta at the time of the riots, don't you think that would be a better outlet for their fantasy to be an anti-hero. No, it began because the police were not visible, because young people are unemployed, because they do not feel like members of society.

This blog has descended a bit into areas i didn't want to go. But maybe in this you can see how i think. The riots were interesting in that they gave us a taste of how anarchy would reign in the case of a social breakdown. Imagine you were told that the ice age was going to arrive in a matter of days. How would you react?